The Services Dimension of TTIP. Paper No. 6 in the CEPS-CTR project “TTIP in the Balance’’ and CEPS Special Report No. 106, 8 May 2015

This CEPS Special Report examines the main facets of the debate about TTIP and services. First, it looks at the political and economic context and the various alternatives in terms of political support, stressing that only a partnership that ensures substantial economic gains will attract the support of the top policy-makers. Second, the paper makes the point that large economic gains in services require deep discussions on regulatory issues, and third, such discussions cannot rely on the negotiating techniques normally used for goods. There is thus a need to adopt a new approach, based on the mutual recognition and equivalence of regulations enforced in the services concerned, preceded by a mutual evaluation to grant such equivalence – all measures to be carried out by the regulatory bodies concerned, not by trade negotiators. This new game is a complex one but it has huge side benefits: it induces each TTIP partner to review the quality of their own regulations; it is at ease with the notion of a ‘living’ (evolving) agreement; and it can easily be open to third countries. All these benefits should reassure a general public that is fearful of a hastily baked deal.

The Catholic Question in Contemporary Portuguese Civil Society: A Case of Muted Vibrancy? CES Papers - Open Forum #14, 2012

The ‘Catholic question’ in contemporary Portugal obliges us to consider whether Catholicism will remain a force in Portuguese associational life in the next century, or whether it faces a future of slow and steady decline. On the one hand, an overall statistical drop of church membership, and the lack of religious practice by almost half of self-identified Roman Catholics, suggests that the future of the Catholic Church in Portugal will probably be very different than the past. On the other hand, the church’s support for democratic processes, the important social services it provides, and its educational establishment, have certainly been a positive factor in Portuguese associational life, and helped the larger process of democratic-regime consolidation since the Carnation Revolution of 1974. This paper suggests that social scientists need to move beyond the lens normally applied to the question of Catholicism in contemporary Europe (i.e. it is a dying, anti-modern, anti-rational, conservative institution), and instead consider the complex interplay of its demographic challenges combined with the popular sources of its theological and spiritual strength, as well as its vital societal contributions, to assess whether or not it will remain a force in Portuguese associational life in the future.

Saving the Banks: The Political Economy of Bailouts. CES Papers - Open Forum #8, 2012

How much leeway did governments have in designing bank bailouts and deciding on the height of intervention during the 2007-2009 financial crisis? This paper analyzes comparatively what explains government responses to banking crises. Why does the type of intervention during financial crises vary to such a great extent across countries? By analyzing the variety of bailouts in Europe and North America, we will show that the strategies governments use to cope with the instability of financial markets does not depend on economic conditions alone. Rather, they take root in the institutional and political setting of each country and vary in particular according to the different types of business-government relations banks were able to entertain with public decision-makers. Still, “crony capitalism” accounts overstate the role of bank lobbying. With four case studies of the Irish, Danish, British and French bank bailout, we show that countries with close one-on-one relationships between policy-makers and bank management tended to develop unbalanced bailout packages, while countries where banks have strong interbank ties and collective negotiation capacity were able to develop solutions with a greater burden sharing from private institutions.

Innovation and Development in the Age of Climate Change Adaptation: Open or Closed?

Change Adaptation: Open or Closed? Paper read at the Second African International Economic Law Network Conference, 7-8 March 2013, Wits School of Law, Johannesburg, South Africa. In a time of rapid convergence of technologies, goods, services, hardware, software, the traditional classifications that informed past treaties fail to remove legal uncertainty, or advance welfare and innovation. As a result, we turn our attention to the role and needs of the public domain at the interface of existing intellectual property rights and new modes of creation, production and distribution of goods and services. The concept of open culture would have it that knowledge should be spread freely and its growth should come from further developing existing works on the basis of sharing and collaboration without the shackles of intellectual property. Intellectual property clauses find their way into regional, multilateral, bilateral and free trade agreements more often than not, and can cause public discontent and incite unrest. Many of these intellectual property clauses raise the bar on protection beyond the clauses found in the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). In this paper we address the question of the protection and development of the public domain in service of open innovation in accord with Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in light of the Objectives (Article 7) and Principles (Article 8) set forth in TRIPS. Once areas of divergence and reinforcement between the intellectual property regime and human rights have been discussed, we will enter into options that allow for innovation and prosperity in the global south. We then conclude by discussing possible policy developments.

Nurse demonstrating procedure on a doll at Mott Children's Hospital Open House, March 22, 1994

side 2

Student move-in: Luggage and furniture in open back of station wagon, ca. 1981

frame 27

Remote storage, facilities, materials selection, and user services /

"May 1990.

Training of technical services staff in the automated environment /

Title from cover.

Uses of document delivery services a SPEC kit /

"November 1994."

Providing public services to remote users /

"June 1993."

Fee-based services : a SPEC kit /

"August 2000."

Open competitive continuous examination program.

Title from cover.

Open air crusaders : the individuality of the child versus the system : together with a report of the Elizabeth McCormick open air schools /

Includes bibliographic references (p. 125-128).